I Love You, Bro!
by BurnThoseEyesBlue
Summary: The five times Mikey told Raph he loved him, and the one where Raph said it back.


**Well, hellloooooo TMNT fandom! It's been a while, I know. A few months ago I got the most amazing, nicest, sweetest PM from my new friend, user Annie Park. You asked for some Raph & Mikey brotherly bonding, and here it is! I really hope you like it; sorry it took me so long! xD **

**THIS IS NOT WRITTEN WITH THE INTENT TO BE TCEST OR SLASH IN ANY WAY. Also, I don't own TMNT. Even now, all these years later. Sorry dudes.**

 **Hope y'all enjoy! I apologize for any OOCness, as it has been a while since I've written for this fandom.**

* * *

Five Times Mikey Told Raph He Loved Him (& the One Where Raph Said it Back)

* * *

 **1.**

* * *

"Raphie, Raphie, Raphie," Mikey babbled. He was lying on his back, trying to chew on one of his feet.

His other brothers were toddling about, minding their own business; Leo was sitting next to their father, copying his mediation position and pretending to meditate with him. Every now and then, he would crack one eye open to see if Splinter was still meditating, and when he saw he was, would quietly shuffle and close his eyes again. Donnie was sprawled out on his stomach, flipping through a beat up picture book he'd read a hundred times before, and Raph was rolling around a car missing a wheel. Donnie promptly ignored his brother making whirring noises and rolling the car over Donnie's shell.

"Raphie," Mikey said again, this time more whiney. Raph still didn't turn around, and Leo opened both eyes at the cry. He tilted his head to the side and observed the scene before him with an expression that was much older than the two years old he was.

"Raph, Mikey want you!" Leo said, looking at his younger brother with a pointed expression. Raph huffed and dug his car harder down onto Donnie's shell, causing him to cry out in irritation. Mikey pushed himself up and sat, looking at his older brothers with sad, blue eyes. Why wasn't Raph paying any attention to him? He wanted to tell him something...

At Mikey's third wail, Splinter finally stirred and stopped his meditation.

"Raphael."

Raph stopped moving his car, but still didn't turn to look at his father. Mikey was crying loudly now, and Donnie clamped hands over his ears and scowled, his reading disturbed.

"Raphael, when someone is talking to you, you look at them." Splinter said, one eyebrow raised. Raph finally turned and looked over at his father. "It seems that Michelangelo wants to talk to you."

Raph didn't look very happy, but he turned in Mikey's direction. Mikey had pulled himself up and was in the process of toddling over to him. His arms were outstretched, and he made grabby hands at Raph's car.

Raph scrunched up his beak and shook his head. "No," he said stubbornly. "Mine."

"Raphael," Splinter warned.

Raph growled, but held out the car. Mikey ignored the car and headed straight for him, bumping into Raph's shell. He plopped down, wrapped his arms around his brother's neck, and planted a sloppy kiss on his cheek.

"Love Raphie." Mikey said, smiling happily. Leo cooed at them, and even Splinter looked on fondly. "Love Raphie."

Raph looked startled for a moment, but slowly squeezed his brother back. After a moment, he let go and pulled back. He held out the car again, this time as a sign of friendship.

* * *

 **2.**

* * *

"RAPH!" Mikey yelped, skidding into Raph's room and slamming the door behind him. His older brother looked up lazily from the magazine he was reading and scowled. Mikey rushed closer to him and collapsed down in front of him.

"What do you want?" Raph grunted. He flicked to the next page of his magazine loudly.

"Hide me," Mikey begged. He clasped two hands underneath his chin and looked up at Raph with the biggest puppy dog eyes he could manage. "I accidentally broke Donnie's... Shell, I don't even know what it was, but he thought it was important!"

Raph made another noncommittal noise and shrugged. Mikey froze as thudding footsteps began to get closer, as well as the deep, angry breathing from the purple clad turtle.

"MICHELANGELO!"

"Raph," Mikey all but begged.

"What do I get out of this?" Raph said, seemingly interested now. His eyes gleamed deviously.

"I don't know, I don't know, I don't know, we can discuss it later; just HIDE ME!" Mikey chanted, tone growing more and more shrill by the second.

Raph shook his head. "Not gonna happen. Do my chores for a month."

Mikey's jaw dropped. "No way! Two weeks."

"Three."

"Deal!"

Mikey scampered behind Raph just as Donnie slammed open the door. For once, Mikey felt real fear at the sight of his normally easy-going brother. Donnie's eyes were wide and crazed, and he was clutching the bent piece of metal Mikey'd messed with in his hand, his Bo in the other.

"Where's Mikey?" He demanded.

"Donnie," Raph said slowly, not taking his eyes off of his magazine. "If you interrupt me, chasing Mikey will be the least of your concerns."

"Where did he go?" Donnie growled.

Raph snorted. "You think he'd come to me? I sent him to Leo's."

"Leo," Donnie muttered under his breath. He immediately turned on his heel and stalked out of the bedroom. Mikey waited a moment before he heard the telltale sign that Donnie had moved on. "LEONARDO!"

He let out a deep breath and sank down against the wall. _That was a close one_ , he thought. He looked up mischievously and flung his arms around Raph's plastron.

"I love you, bro!" He said, squeezing as hard as he could. Raph yelped in surprise and dropped his magazine.

"The shell? Get out of my room!" Raph frowned and pushed him away, snatching up the magazine and smoothing out the bent pages.

Mikey stood up and paused, balancing up and down on his tippy toes. "But don't you wanna have brotherly bonding time?" He teased, batting his eyes.

Raph's eyes flicked up from the page he was on and narrowed. He feinted like he was about to get up and chase after him, one fist raised. Mikey turned and ran out, squealing.

Raph snickered to himself and settled back down in his hammock. "Yeah, that's what I thought."

* * *

 **3.**

* * *

Mikey was sitting in his room. Granted, it was his room, and he had every right to be there, but he wasn't meant to be alone. He was waiting for Raph to show up.

He bounced once, twice, on his bed and flopped onto his shell. He tried to entertain himself by playing with action figures, and then rereading his comic books, but he couldn't push down the excited butterflies in his stomach. He even tried taking a nap, but his brain just wouldn't turn off.

All of a sudden, the doorknob jiggled, and Mikey shot straight up. Raph opened the door and slipped in. Mikey took in his long trench coat and the fedora pulled down over his eyes.

"You got the stuff?" Mikey whispered. He bounded up and shut the door behind Raph, locking it and then pulling his beanbag chair in front of it for a makeshift barricade. You know, just in case someone happened to barge in.

Raph's grin was wicked, and he held up a plastic sack, shaking it lightly. He sat down on Mikey's bed and leaned back, placing one arm behind his head. "Got it all right here."

Mikey flopped down next to him and grinned back. He was sitting close enough to Raph where he could see his reflection in his eyes - crazed grin, a wild gleam in his eyes, practically wiggling with excitement.

"I brought all of my leftover supplies. I think we're set." Mikey said, pulling out a woopie cushion and a few straggling balloons from behind his back. "Dr. Prankenstein is back!"

Raph rolled his eyes fondly. He grabbed his own bag and dumped it, laying out all of the new prank supplies Mikey had sent him out to buy.

You see, he was still technically grounded from going topside because of his and Donnie's whole... incident. Mikey had gone stir-crazy in the past few days, and therefore had cooked up quite a few good, new ideas for some pranks. If he did say so himself.

The only problem was that he was out of supplies. So he'd approached Raph with his idea. Unfortunately, Raph thought it was stupid, and frankly told him so, in less than polite terms. However, then Mikey used the words "prank" and "Leo" in the same sentence, and suddenly Raph was interested again.

His older brothers were weird.

Mikey marveled at the collection of items Raph had dumped out. Whipped cream, more balloons, several gruesome looking monster masks, fake bugs, poop, blood, snot. He'd even bought a squeaky rubber chicken. It was quite a collection, and he couldn't wait to get started.

Raph watched Mikey's face appraisingly, shoulders relaxing a bit when he saw he was pleased.

"Good," he said gruffly. "I wasn't about to go topside again."

(They both pretended that wasn't true).

"Thanks, dude!" Mikey said. He dug his hands in the pile of balloons and slowly let them fall through his fingers. "What do I owe ya, a box of pizza? My treat."

Raph waved a hand in dismissal. "Nah, this one's on me. I'll do anything to catch the look on Fearless's face after he gets a whiff of this."

Mikey shrugged. "Your loss. Anyway, so I was thinking we could do something a little like this. If we put the-"

Raph started. "Oh! I almost forgot." He pulled another bag out of the inside of his coat and tossed it to Mikey. Mikey's brow furrowed in confusion. He reached inside and pulled out a...

"A rubber snake?" Mikey said, face splitting into a huge grin. He laughed, utterly delighted. "Dude! I didn't even think of this! It's perfect. Oh man, Leo's gonna _die_."

If Raph's cheeks were a little red from the praise, Mikey didn't point it out.

"I figured we could hide it under his pillow." The devilish gleam in Raph's eyes was back. He rubbed his hands together gleefully, snatched the snake up from the bed, and inspected it casually. "Do you think Donnie would let us borrow some hidden cameras?"

Mikey sat back, totally in shock. Who knew Raph would get so into this? Raph continued blabbing on, totally oblivious to the fact Mikey had zoned out.

"Dude," Mikey said, doing his best to look as serious as could be. Raph stopped talking and flashed him an irritated look.

"What?"

"I freakin' love you."

* * *

 **4.**

* * *

Mikey took a deep breath and tried to get himself to observe what was going on. He was twirling his nunchucks wildly, shell to shell with Raph. That he could handle. What he wasn't as excited to deal with was preparing to face off against the four Purple Dragons that had backed them into an alleyway.

That night when they'd first headed out on patrol, Leo had split them up, figuring they could cover more ground that way. Really, he just wanted Raph off his back. Leo wasn't very smooth about hiding that.

The patrol had gone well, if a tad bit boring, on their rounds. It wasn't until they'd started heading back to the lair's nearest manhole cover when they were snuck up upon. Man, Splinter was going to kill them later.

Mikey glanced over his shoulder at Raph. A cold smile mocked the gang members, and his fingers twitched slightly on his sai. One of the gang members spit something to his friend, and they both sneered. "You're outnumbered, freaks," the tallest one said. His friends all laughed.

Mikey mock-gasped and put a hand to his plastron. "I know you are, but what am I?" Raph groaned behind him, and the Purple Dragons stopped laughing. Mikey felt a sharp jab in his side. "What? It's true." They settled into an uneasy silence, and Mikey bounced on the balls of his feet.

"Ready?" Raph muttered, not bothering to look back at his little brother.

Mikey could feel an excited grin of his own start to spread. "Ready," he agreed.

"3...2...1..."

"WOOHOO!" Mikey yelled, leaping into action a fraction of a second after Raph.

It was all pretty blurry from there. Mikey remembered knocking one of the men on the head and the resulting crack and slump to the ground. He could hear the sharp scraping of Raph's Sai against the brick walls and against one of their opponent's knives. He could feel the scratch of something against his shell. He could hear the cry of another man as he fell.

Mikey stumbled back, panting. Raph stepped in front of him, Sai raised up by his face in defense.

"You okay, little bro?" Raph asked, sneering at the no-longer-so-cocky Purple Dragons. There were only two of them left, one of them clutching his arm tight to his chest, blood leaking through his fingers. The other had mimicked Raph's position by standing in front of his wounded ally, knife raised. Their two goon friends were slumped near each other on the ground, chests rising and falling steadily, but definitely unconscious.

Mikey nodded, a lopsided smile on his face. "Ready to kick some more shell." He held up his nunchucks and wiggled them at his brother.

Raph's grin mirrored his own. "I'll bounce you."

Mikey's jaw dropped. They hadn't tried jumping off one another's shells like that since they broke the TV, and had officially been grounded for months.

"But Leo said..."

"Leo ain't here right now. Come on, shell-fer-brains, what are you waiting on?"

Mikey's jaw only remained open for a moment more before giving Raph a dazzling smile. "Dude, I love you."

Raph rolled his eyes. He bent over, shell to the air, and Mikey crouched down, ready to take off running. The Purple Dragons behind them straightened up, eyebrows furrowed in confusion.

"Ready?" Mikey said. Raph grunted, and he took off. He flipped in the air, bracing his hands on Raph's shell and propelling himself even higher. He swung out his nunchucks, ready to attack the two gang members he was quickly about to fall on.

"COWABUNGA!"

* * *

 **5.**

* * *

Mikey held his breath as he tiptoed past Leo's and Donnie's rooms. He tilted his head to listen out for any signs of their waking, and when he heard nothing, slowly let out his breath. He leapt nimbly to the garage, where Raph was waiting on him.

"You ready, kid?" Raph said, a lopsided grin on his face. He threw a spare motorcycle helmet at Mikey's plastron and held out a faded wrinkled jacket.

Mikey grinned back, equal feelings of excitement and nerves. He shrugged on the jacket and pulled the helmet down.

Raph had settled down on the motorcycle and kicked up the kickstand. He had his own helmet on now, and Mikey could only see the golden flash of his eyes. He jerked his head to signal him to hurry up, Mikey jumped on the back behind him and wrapped his arms around his shell.

"Hold on," Raph said, voice muffled. He immediately revved the engine, and Mikey gasped as they took off. He clenched his eyes shut as Raph narrowly missed hitting a pedestrian when they came roaring out of the alleyway.

He heard Raph laughing and slowly opened his eyes. They were out on the streets now, lights casting down faint golden beams. They were the sole ones out now, and Mikey marveled at the sight of empty New York streets.

Raph turned sharply, making the motorcycle lean down so close to the ground Mikey could have easily reached out and touched it. He wrapped his arms tighter around Raph and gasped as they came out by the water. Mikey could see the silhouettes of the far off buildings and the twinkling lights in all the windows.

Raph turned his head to the side. "Better than the view from the sewers, eh?"

They sped on, and when Mikey whooped with delight, Raph threw his head back and laughed.

This was Mikey's new favorite version of Raph. Sure, he always loved his brother, but Raph out here free like this was completely different than the grouchy, cooped up one in the sewers. Mikey could see the appeal of why Raph wanted to go to the surface so badly. If anything, that's where Mikey thought he belonged, too.

It was early in the morning by the time they slowly drove back into the garage. Mikey was sure that if he had hair, it would be completely windblown. Even now, his cheeks were red with windburn. Raph kicked the kickstand out and swung off the motorcycle. He pulled his helmet off and put it on top of the handlebars. He folded his jacket and laid it on the seat.

Mikey pulled off his own jacket and held it out, by Raph scrunched up his beak and waved a hand at him. "Keep it. For next time."

Mikey blinked, and then his eyes lit up a second letter. "There's gonna be a next time?!" He exclaimed.

Raph raised an eye ridge. "Not if you make it weird. Or snitch. Or get us caught."

Mikey marked an x over his plastron, and Raph rolled his eyes as they strode into the lair. Raph put a silent finger to his beak and shot him a warning look.

They hadn't even gotten down into the living area when the lights flicked on, a frowning Leonardo sitting on the couch waiting for them. An irritated Donatello was slumped next to him, looking like he'd rather be anywhere but there.

"Raphael, Michelangelo, where were you?" Leo scolded. Mikey slumped a little.

Mikey forced a smile on his face and leaned close to Raph. "Bro, if we don't make it out of this alive, know I love you."

Raph shoved him away.

* * *

 **+1.**

* * *

Raph trudged down the hill, alone, in the edge of the woods. When Casey said he wanted to go up to the farmhouse and get one of his old hockey sticks, Raph had volunteered immediately to go up there. He and his brothers had been up at the farmhouse a lot lately. The wind blew, and he pulled the trench coat closer in, adjusting Casey's duffel bag up his shoulder. He'd gotten what he needed, but he still had one last thing to check on.

Normally he was accompanied with at least one of his brothers, but this time, he'd come by himself. Leo had offered to go with him, a sad and knowing look in his eyes, but when Raph refused, he didn't push it.

Raph reached the bottom of the hill and leaned against the first tree down there. He looked down at the ground and shuffled his feet, cursing himself for not listening to Leo and wearing an extra pair of socks. He jerked himself. He needed to focus.

"Hey, Mikey," Raph said, a small smile tugging at his lips. "How long has it been since I've been up here, a month and a half?"

"I'm sorry, bro. I can't stay long this time; Casey's expectin' me. But it didn't feel right coming up here without dropping in."

Raph was silent for a moment, his heart heavy. "Do you remember that time I took you out on the motorcycle? And then how Leo chewed me out for a good two hours after that?" Raph huffed a laugh. "'It's too dangerous for him!' Leo told me. 'Why would you think that's a good idea?! I can't protect you, but I can protect him!'" Raph shook his head and rolled his eyes.

"I know you always wanted to go out again, and I hate to say it, but Fearless Leader was right. Although, if it was all up to me, we totally would've gone out again."

"If only we'd had the time to." Raph reached out a hand and hesitated. Slowly, he put it on the top of the small grey headstone in front of him.

 _MICHELANGELO_ was the sole word etched on it. Raph could remember carving it after the... the incident happened. He stayed up all night working on it, red eyed and crying. Donnie had woken him up that next morning, eyes just as puffy as his own.

"It's not good enough," Raph had said. "There needs to be more. But I can't find the words."

Donnie had just given him a sad half-smile. "He would've loved it anyway, coming from you."

Raph jerked himself out of the memory. "I'm sorry, Mikey. You didn't deserve any of this. I... I love you, baby bro. And I'm still sorry for not saying it earlier."

Raph patted the stone one more time and swiped the back of his hand over his eyes. Slowly, he reached into his pocket and pulled out a handful of old balloons and settled them over the grass. He stood up and turned around, and Raphael began his long, lonely trip home.

* * *

 **Hope y'all liked it! Sorry for the angst ;)**

 **I'll leave it up to y'all's imagination on what exactly happened to Mikey...**

 **R &R!**


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